The Last Great American Highway

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The genesis of I-69 was very strange. It was not the work of the US Department of Transportation, it wasn't an idea that came out of Washington. It came from a breakfast table in Indiana, and it was an ad-hoc effort. They were trying to build a road through Indiana, all of the studies said it wasn't worth building, and an economist had a brainstorm and said, why not make it a multi-state corridor?

The history of economic development in the United States has always been connected to the messy business of opening up trade routes. Whether it was the Erie Canal, which for many threatened to cut through their quaint home towns, or the thousands of miles of railroad track and highways strewn across the country, the same has been true: new transportation routes brought development, shipping and a lot of change.

The familiar battle lines have been drawn for another struggle for existence by a major interstate highway in America. I-69 is meant to be a 1,400-mile road that crosses the United States, north to south, connecting the Canadian and Mexican borders.